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Chasing Gremlins
The hull tap-outs had yielded a few notes that she’d have to report. First and foremost, the entire re-entry surface would be due for a recoat. It didn’t need to happen immediately, but some of the leading edges were showing a minimal burn through pattern. Bottom coat was a damned pricey proposition. Marisol conjured she’d try to make do with a couple five gallon buckets once they got to New Kasmir. A trip topside with a hair raising crawl over the cockpit viewports revealed similar weakness in the primary buffer panel mounts. She could protect them for a spell with the same bottom coat, but reaching them, even with a brush on a broom handle, was a righteous pain in the pigu Maybe she could sweet talk whoever had the longest arms into helping with that one. The big job would be the rotator seal rings on the atmo engine pylons. Of course, replacing a seal on something that rotated typically meant taking something off in order to slip a fresh one into place. In this case, that ‘something’ was an entire atmo engine and it’s coupling…not a project to be tackled by a crescent wrench. The design was intentional; the engineers at Allied Spacecraft Corp, reasoning that if one moving part was wore out it was time to check the others, namely, the support shaft and its’ bearings. Probably another reason that well maintained Fireflies didn’t just fall right out of the sky, but a real sock to the cash purse in dockyard crane fees. Lunar Veil had about six more trips in her current seals before they got proper dicey, so she had a little time to get that seed planted in the captain’s mind. All in all, “el Vee” was ready for upthrust. Hydraulics, avionics, control linkages all checked out. The power plant had a weird kind of imbalance across its’ three phases. One phase appeared to be drawing a lot more amperage than its’ mates. Still, the load calculations pointed toward green lights, so that was a problem she’d suss out while they were underway. For the moment, Marisol was chasing a loose metallic rattle. Careful not to get snatched up by the spinning engine, she dropped to her knees, arching her back to bend in low. A pocket flashlight shone downward, it’s beam playing across the accelerator core’s dorsal housing. Somewhere down there was a loose plate. It serenaded her with a rapid bump-bump-bump-bump-bump-bump sound that, while strictly an annoyance, would also impede her ability to listen to the ship talking. Carefully, she scanned the length of the housing… "Who are you?" She glanced over her shoulder, catching sight of a pair of boots. The owner was a teenaged boy, and just barely so. His clothes had seen better days, but no matter. Having a teenaged boy of her own, Marisol conjured that the specimen before her would be growing into a new set of clothes right quick. "Where is Devron?" She backed out from beneath the spinning engine to settle on her knees. “I don’t know,” she answered the youth. “My name is Marisol. What’s yours?”